Abstract:
In the wide-ranging and multifaceted discourses of public theologies within very
different and pluralistic contexts, the strongest contemporary emphasis falls on their
integrity and relevance in relating to their respective contexts and socio-political
movements within those much globalised contexts. This emphasis is questioned,
arguing that a more fundamental and critical question is at stake. Against the
background of a short overview of different stories (self-understandings) of public
theology, the critical question is put forward, namely whether the emphasis should fall
on the public square after all, but much rather on the ‘publicness’ of rationality that
precedes the different contexts (squares!). The focus is therefore on the publicness of
rationality in pursuit of the old well-known but ever challenging question, namely ‘will
the real public theology please stand up’. It is argued that the integrity and relevance
that ‘public theologies’ strive for, are to be firstly sought and found in their models of
rationality – as the ‘stuff’ of embodiment as sites of struggle and survival that they are
woven from – and secondly contextually articulated and explicated in engagement and
conversation with the very pluralism they hope to address in a constructive-realistic
manner.
